


Missy and Moony

by fpandaliceriverdale



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Lets see where this goes, Multi, Romance, falice - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 09:00:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17077316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fpandaliceriverdale/pseuds/fpandaliceriverdale
Summary: When Gladys Jones comes to the Cooper House, Alice expects a certain kind of reckoning.





	Missy and Moony

It was a Tuesday evening at 9:50 and Betty’s weeknight curfew was in ten minutes. Reading a book in her bedroom, Alice was keeping the faith. After Jughead’s first appearance as an official boyfriend, Alice had expected Betty’s respect for her curfew to disappear but while there had been a few issues, Alice was pleasantly surprised that Betty had in general kept to the curfew or called well in advance for an extension. Weekends were another story, but Alice was taking the wins where she could get them. Almost on cue, the door opened and Alice could hear Betty laughing. Betty said something and an older female voice Alice couldn’t immediately place laughed in response. 

“Mom!” Betty yelled, “Can you come downstairs?” 

Alice set down her book and slid into her slippers, curious. She was momentarily self-conscious about her pajamas but after a split-second, internally shrugged. Hal was a serial killer, what did it matter if someone knew she wore an old Pop’s shirt and oversized flannel pants to bed. Besides, no one aside from their former owners would know where she had gotten them. As she moved down the hall, Alice silently hoped it wasn’t Hermione. As much as she had come to accept Veronica, Alice still couldn’t quite deal with Hermione and Hiram. When she rounded the corner at the top of the stairs she saw a dark head of hair that she immediately recognized but couldn’t quite believe was really there. 

“Honey, I’m telling you, he was the fattest baby I’ve ever seen.” the woman said, “Jug would eat anything.” 

The woman turned when Alice’s next step creaked on the stairs and Alice came face to face with Gladys Jones. 

“Gladys?” Alice said, still not quite believing her own eyes. Gladys smiled in response behind her dark bangs. Nostalgia, shame, and a certain joy rushed through Alice all at once. She wasn’t sure if she was going to throw up or hug the woman in front of her. Gladys’ smile didn’t waver in the face of Alice’s confusion and Alice was struck by the gesture. Her smile was so comforting and familiar but so unexpected, so undeserved. 

“What are you doing here?” Alice asked, confused enough for her voice to carry an edge.

“Mom!” Betty reprimanded, eyes flaring, “Don’t be rude. Mrs. Jones just got back into town and she wanted to come say hello. She had dinner with Mr. Jones and Jellybean and Juggie and I and it was really nice.” Betty said, looking pointedly at her mother.

“Well, hello. Come in.” Alice managed. She knew Betty meant well but her daughter still didn’t know much about her Southside connections both past and present. Betty had no idea about Alice’s current relationship with FP, let alone her history with Gladys. As the three sat down on the sofa, Alice braced for a standoff. She figured Gladys must have heard about she and FP and she was waiting for the opening salvo. It didn’t come. 

“I was just telling Betty about Jug as a baby. Did you ever see him when he was little, Alice?” Gladys said. Alice shook her head. “He was a monster, biggest chunk of kid I’ve seen to this day. Still eats like that but somehow stays rail thin.” 

Gladys face was a blank slate. Her small smile was still in place so she seemed fine but something told Alice she knew about FP. Why else would she be at the house? Alice’s rational brain couldn’t come up with any other reason. Whether she did or she didn’t know, Alice wasn’t sure how long the pleasantries would last and didn’t want to take the chance that Betty would be in the room if anything painful or private was brought up. 

“Betty, you should get ready for bed. I know you’ve got an exam tomorrow.” Alice said, motioning to the stairs. Betty rolled her eyes. 

“Mom, I can stay down here for a few minutes, that won’t be the difference between an A and B.”

Before Alice could respond, Gladys hopped in. “I was actually hoping to talk to your mom alone if that’s alright. We have some stuff to talk about between the two of us.” Gladys said, tipping her head to Alice. Alice took a deep steadying breath. So she did know. 

Betty looked confused as she stood to leave, and eyed them both with the suspicion she was so famous for. Alice was readying herself for a fight with Gladys and couldn’t handle full-snoop Betty at the same time so she tried another pointed dismissal to hurry her along. 

“Elizabeth, we are adults. We don’t need to explain ourselves to you. I’ll see you in the morning, sleep well.” 

Betty’s eyes stayed on the two of them until she disappeared upstairs and Alice waited for the sound of Betty’s door closing before turning back to Gladys. 

“Thank you for bringing Betty home.” Alice said, voice even and measured.

Gladys didn’t respond. Instead, Alice felt Gladys’ gaze move slowly over her, starting at the top of her head before meandering across her face and ending at her ringless left hand. Alice felt herself squirm and waited for the leather clad woman across from her to speak. 

“Do remember Mrs. Ramirez? Fifth grade?” Gladys said finally. 

Alice had looked down out of the pure desire to escape Gladys’ observation but her eyes snapped up at the out of the blue comment. She couldn’t imagine where the other woman was going. She paused before responding, trying to figure out what tact Gladys might have been taking. 

“With the terrible haircut?” Gladys prompted, as if memory was Alice’s problem. 

“Yes, of course.” Alice replied, surrendering out of confusion, “The tiny little curls, we called her Medusa because you were reading that Legends and Myth book.” Gladys nodded, looking almost relieved. 

“We tried to get her to call you Artemis and me Luna but she just plain refused.” Gladys said with a laugh. Alice raised an eyebrow but sensing no ill will, played along. If laughing about the past was all that Gladys was here to do, Alice was all too happy to oblige. 

Alice scrunched her nose in an imitation of the old woman they’d grown to love as a teacher. “‘Alice, Gladys, you have wonderful god-given names. I won’t hear another word about calling you anything else.’ Didn’t stop us. How long did we call each other Artemis and Luna?” 

“Oh up through middle school.” Gladys said fondly. Her voice changed only slightly as she went on. “Alice, I know about you and FP. He told me, when Jellybean and I came home.”

Alice’s temporary relief was gone and panic rushed through her. 

“Gladys,” Alice began but faltered. There had been no anger in Gladys’ voice, Alice realized, just weariness. 

“Alice, can I ask you a few things? I know you love to talk, you’ve always loved to talk, but I think you owe me just a little bit of space to speak? When I’m done, you can say whatever you need to.” Again, there was no anger. Thrown off a bit, Alice nodded. She wasn’t sure there was a better choice than just letting Gladys continue.

“Remember the night I turned 16 and we were initiated at the Wyrm? You’d waited two extra months to join so I could join with you and we were both so excited to get our official serpent names. I knew Mr. Jones had heard us playing between the trailers growing up but I never thought he’d remember our stupid names. I can still hear him chuckling to himself when he gave us our jackets after the dance. ‘Missy and Moony snakedancing together, my my, my girls grew up.’ We almost got M&Ms tattooed on our wrists that night. Reena Fogarty smacked us across the face when she saw FP with the tattoo needle above our wrists.” 

Gladys glanced down at her folded hands and softly rubbed the spot in question just inside her wrist, lost for a bit in their old world. Alice noticed the small action and caught herself brushing a finger over the same space on her own body. The shared intimacy of the absent minded touch seemed to Alice to bring the memories of their old friendship surging into the room. Today they sat across from each other almost strangers but for years they had known each other better than anyone else in the world. Even as Alice noticed the lines in Gladys’ face and the softness around her hips, she recognized the same energy in her old friend. She had aged, certainly, but her spirit was the same. Alice wondered if the same was true of herself. Gladys studied her hands as she continued. 

“I still think about the day you told me you were moving to the Northside. I thought nothing would change, and for a while nothing did. FP was already there and I was stuck on the Southside but school wasn’t everything. Even when you and he started dating, I didn’t care. You could have him that way if I could keep you both in my life. But then out of nowhere you dropped him. And then you dropped me.” Gladys voice broke over the last sentence and Alice found herself reaching out a hand across the coffee table.

“Gladys, it wasn’t that-” Alice began, but Gladys drew back from Alice’s extended hand and looked up, face wet. 

“Alice, I don’t know what happened, but you leaving destroyed us. You left a crater in our world. I didn’t have my Missy and FP didn’t have his Allie.”

“I had to get out, I had other people to think about,” Alice tried to explain. Gladys ignored her. 

“We lived inside your absence, there was no space or moment free of you. The Wyrm was you. The trailer park was you. Hell even each other, we reminded each other of you. He looked at me sometimes like I’d driven you away and I can’t blame him. Some days I hated him because I thought the exact same thing about him.”

Alice had never heard anything about the wreckage she’d left behind in the Southside. She’d told herself that she’d never looked back out of service to her unborn child but part of her had always known it had been out of fear. If she looked back, she might have gone back. Seeing the people she’d loved in pain would have pulled she and her baby back across the tracks. 

“One of my younger sister’s friends got out of The Sisters of Quiet Mercy a few months later and she was telling us about all the crazy people there. She told me about people who tried to hurt her and scary nuns but also a pregnant girl named Alice who punched a boy who wouldn’t leave her alone. I was only half listening from another room but I heard your name and I ran in and demanded to know everything. Was she blonde? Did she have a snake tattoo? What was her last name? Of course, it was you. You were pregnant and you hadn’t told me. I started crying, Alice, and I swear I don’t remember stopping. FP pulled me off the floor of the Wyrm six hours later and carried me home, I swear I was still crying. I couldn’t form sentences. I just kept saying your name.”

Tears were streaming unchecked down Gladys’ face now. 

“I never told him about the baby. I was almost sure it was his but if it wasn’t… well I couldn’t imagine inflicting either pain on him in that moment. That night FP sat me down on the sofa when we got back to his trailer and put his hands on my shoulders. He was crying as hard as I was when he made me look him in the eye.” Gladys steadied herself and stood up. She walked over to Alice’s sofa and sat right beside her, reaching one hand out to rest on Alice’s shoulder. Alice didn’t flinch or move away from the contact, she couldn’t. Gladys wiped her cheeks with her other hand and placed it on the opposite shoulder, pain-filled eyes rising to meet Alice’s. “‘He looked me dead in the eye and said ‘She isn’t coming back Moony, we gotta figure out a way to live without her.’”

The pain in Gladys’ eyes was alive and that moment it devoured Alice. All the guilt and shame of the suffering she’d caused hit her like a tidal wave. She’d been able to push it all away when she could keep the reminders out of sight but Gladys was the living breathing proof of the wreckage she’d left behind. Alice already had tears to match Gladys’ but she felt her composure slipping even further. Before the sob Alice could feel growing in her gut could break, Gladys’ hands fell from her shoulders.

“Then I kissed him. And he kissed me back. And we were both thinking of you. But we kissed again, and again, over and over for weeks. Eventually we weren’t thinking of you. Eventually we were with each other. In the beginning, we’d talk about you and grieve together. It was just like you died. But we grew together and life happened. We moved in together and you faded a bit. We got married and you seemed just a little further away. After Jug and Jellybean were born, you were almost a ghost. Almost.” 

Alice had had no idea how Gladys and FP had gotten together. When she had heard about it after she’d left them behind, she’d felt betrayed. Her best friend and her boyfriend had seemed to have wasted no time moving on with each other. She couldn’t have been more wrong. 

“Missy,” Gladys said her Serpent name in a half-whisper. “As crazy as it sounds, some part of you was always with us. I found a best friend, but he was never going to be anything like you. He found a way to love me, but it was never going to be the way he loved you.” 

Alice broke then, 20 years of pain coming for her all at once. She had never allowed herself to think about Gladys and FP, to remember the only real family she had on the Southside, she’d never let herself imagine their pain. To hear of theirs reminded her of her own and she realized what a disaster she had wrought. Alice had tolerated Hal and loved Betty and Polly with every part of her being but it was never the way she had loved FP and Gladys. And, it appeared, they had never loved anyone quite the same either. How had she been so stupid? How had she thrown them away? She sobbed, deep, body shaking sobs and in the midst of her grief she felt Gladys’ arms surround her. She only shook harder. She didn’t deserve the comfort, least of all from one of the two people she’d hurt the most. 

“Shhh.” Gladys whispered, “Come back.” Alice tried to stop the tears and slow her breathing but suddenly all she could smell was cinnamon gum and hairspray. It was Gladys but so too it was the scent of 16, of being folded up in a booth on the same side as her best friend with her feet in her boyfriend’s lap. It was the smell of being young, of being carefree, of being happy. 

“I’m so, so-” Alice began, trying to pull back and meet Gladys’ eye between sobs. Gladys pulled her tighter. 

“Just cry Missy. You can apologize later.” 

So Alice did. She cried for the girl she had been, for the decision she’d made, for the people she’d hurt. She’d cried remembering the day she’d met Gladys in the second grade, the night she first kissed FP, their last night all together at the drive-in. It was all too much. And nothing she could do now would ever be enough. 

“Missy, come back to me.” Gladys said softly, kissing Alice’s hair. The old comfort of Gladys’ head kisses brought a watery smile to her face and she spoke without thinking. 

“Don’t leave. I don’t deserve to ask, but I will. Just stay for a while.” Alice whispered. She felt Gladys’ arms tense around her and as the other woman pulled back a new wave of tears threatened. She had already chased her away. Alice felt a finger under her chin and she looked up to find Gladys’ eyes full of fear but also the tiniest bit of hope. 

“Missy, if you’re back, I need you to be back.” Alice felt Gladys tremble as her next breath came in shaky. “I can’t lose you again.” 

There was a moment of silence, of stillness, and it seemed to Alice that a million bad decisions had led her to a moment where she might make one final good or bad decision. She threw her arms around Gladys and buried her face in the familiar dark hair. 

“I’m done running.” Alice said, surprising herself with the certainty in her voice. “You two have been my family since I could walk. I’m never leaving you again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Considering making this a multi-chap but am undecided. Love writing these guys, they are wonderful and wild.


End file.
